Monitoring and evaluating revalidation

We are working with others to monitor the implementation of revalidation. We have also started work to evaluate its impact.

Taking Revalidation Forward – Sir Keith Pearson’s Review

Sir Keith Pearson, independent chair of the former Revalidation Advisory Board, carried out a review of the operation and impact of revalidation throughout 2016, which was published in January 2017. Since then, we have been working closely with representatives from the range of organisations and groups involved in revalidation, to discuss the recommendations and develop a plan of action to implement them.

Read our action plan (pdf), which includes a number of actions to improve revalidation.

Revalidation Oversight Group

We have recently established the Revalidation Oversight Group to oversee the progress and delivery of our Taking Revalidation Forward action plan. This group is chaired by our Chief Executive, Charlie Massey, and includes representatives of all four UK health departments, the BMA, training bodies, primary care and employer representatives, as well as patient representatives. Sir Keith Pearson is a member of the group, acting as a specialist adviser.

This group replaces the Revalidation Advisory Board, which was in place from 2013 – March 2017. The board provided advice to us about how effectively revalidation was operating and was chaired by Sir Keith Pearson.

Revalidation data reports

Long-term evaluation of the impact of revalidation

We have appointed an independent UK wide collaboration of researchers, UMbRELLA (UK Medical Revalidation Evaluation coLLAboration), led by Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry to carry out a long-term evaluation of revalidation. It will explore the impact of revalidation and look at ways to help shape it further in the future. This started in 2014 and the study is due to conclude in 2018.

In April 2016, we published the interim findings from the UMbRELLA research. Shaping the future of medical revalidation - interim report, focuses on the results of a survey of licensed doctors and includes feedback from a number of patient and public representatives. It also presents some results from a survey of Responsible Officers which was conducted jointly with researchers commissioned by the Department of Health, as part of a separate study of revalidation in England.

UMbRELLA carried out a series of further surveys in 2016, to understand experiences of revalidation across a number of different groups of doctors. You can find out more about this in our Revalidation Evaluation Survey Q&A (pdf)